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Wednesday, January 30, 2013

OMB Approves Extension of TSA Rail Security ICR

Yesterday the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approved
a three year extension of the information collection request (ICR) for the
rail security reporting requirements for the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA). The four data collections supported by this ICR are:

These four are all required for freight railroads handling
RSSM materials. The last two also apply to passenger rail systems.

ICR Changes

TSA reported that there were no changes in the proposed
extension of the ICR other than an increase in the estimated number of entities
reporting. As I noted in my earlier
blog post about the initial 60-day public notice associated with this ICR,
this is a less than accurate description of the proposed burden description.
While there was an 17,603 (20%) increase in expected responses there was a
decrease of 234,922 hours of burden associated with this ICR. There is no
explanation in the public documentation of this ICR of where the increase in
responses would come from or how there will be such a drastic (81.3%) decrease
in the amount of time that the affected entities will spend on these reporting
requirements. If TSA had listed the burden expectations for each of the four
collections covered under this ICR we might be better able to understand these
changes.

There is one other change in the ICR submission and approval
that is not mentioned in the documentation for the requested ICR extension. The
estimated cost burden was decreased from $9,388,567 to $0.00. I don’t think
this change is due to changes in regulatory burden estimated at TSA; we have
seen a total absence of estimated cost burden in all of the recent ICR renewals
that I have looked at. It looks like the Obama Administration has changed their
interpretation of the cost burden to only address the cost of establishing the
reporting mechanism in the regulated community, not the cost of maintaining those
systems and the costs associated with the actual reporting of the required
information. It would be interesting to see the OMB’s justification for that
change.

Information Sharing

OMB reported that they approved this ICR renewal with
changes. The only change documented is an interesting requirement for TSA to
look at the sharing of the collected information with the Department of
Transportation (PHMSA in particular). The ICR extension approval notes that:

“Prior to resubmission, TSA should
coordinate with DOT and PHMSA to explore whether there might be any
opportunities to share information related to this collection. TSA should
provide a joint briefing (with PHMSA) to OMB on this topic before 2/1/2014.”

It is hard to understand what freight rail safety
information is covered by this ICR, but if any of this information will
legitimately assist PHMSA in regulating the safe transportation of this limited
segment of hazardous materials, the information should certainly be shared with
PHMSA. Of course, some of this material is sensitive security information (SSI)
and will have to be appropriately protected in the information sharing process.

About Me

I spent 15 years in the US Army as an Infantry NCO. After getting out of the Army I started working in the chemical industry, getting my BSc Chemistry degree while working as a technician. I spent 12 years working as a process chemist in a specialty chemical company. I'm now working as a QA Manager in a specialty chemical manufacturing facility.